The long and winding road: Institutional and disciplinary repository at Saarland University and State Library

The purpose of this article is to describe the open access archiving of scientific primary and secondary literature on the institutional and the disciplinary repository of the Saarland University and State Library. The challenges, opportunities and success factors of both repositories are compared and evaluated.

The article is based on the findings and experiences of eight years of open access archiving practice.

Basic requirements for success and acceptance are: quality control and standardisation that could be proved for example by an official certificate; and visibility and dissemination – researchers emphasize that their documents are indexed by the databases most common within their community. This applies especially to disciplinary repositories.

Universities should undoubtedly offer an institutional repository. Usually the university library runs this repository. The article lists some key points that should be considered when an organisation plans to start and run an institutional or disciplinary repository.